The Lagos Business School (LBS) has for many years maintained the practice of organizing brush-up sessions for new Executive MBA (EMBA) participants. From my understanding, applicants’ skill levels are assessed during their entrance examinations and the results of this assessment provides relevant information for a proper needs assessment exercise. These sessions are designed to enable programme participants to brush up on the needed skills for a successful period of studies at LBS.
Our very first brush up session was on a rather odd and unexpected topic: speed reading. As it turns out, the LBS runs a very rigorous and demanding EMBA programme. Of the many demands placed on its participants, the EMBA demands most of all their already extremely limited time. Participants are advised to squeeze out two hours of an already tight schedule to study daily. Judging from the volume of work required to be done, two hours of study daily did not seem nearly sufficient.
Now if you are like me, you would need the first 10 minutes to clear your head, then the next thirty minutes to read about half a page. Next, you’ve got to take breaks: to watch news and mixed martial arts highlights on YouTube, to listen to the latest music, to watch sports and movie highlights, to watch documentary and movie trailers, the list goes on. With the presence of desktop versions of messaging apps such as WhatsApp, distractions come every minute. If you belong to WhatsApp groups as vibrant as mine, then you may need to set aside a great deal of time, even if just to glance through messages. And oh, let’s not forget bathroom breaks. We’re only human after all.
We began with an exercise where we were asked to read, as fast as was humanly possible, through a five page document within a very limited amount of time. We were invited to trust our minds to the point of resisting the urge to re-read lines or sentences which we felt we had skipped. I embraced the challenge and, to my pleasant surprise, even the words and phrases which I had skipped did very little to impede my understanding of the subject matter. What was more, with reading at such high speed, I instinctively focused all of my attention on the text and easily resisted the urge to think of anything else. It was similar to driving a car at top speed. The stakes are higher and a second of failed concentration could prove fatal in a second. Nothing can be taken for granted.
As the class went on, the facilitator also shared some tips to help my colleagues and I to read more effectively which I have listed below
- Stop talking to yourself.
- Use your pen as a tracker.
- Scan for key words.
- Rest your eyes by looking at something in the distance for a minute before returning to the text in front of you.
- Keep the subject matter in mind.
I have been practicing these techniques during my study time and I have even shared them with a colleague at work. The results have been stellar and I am only getting better with each study session. New superpower unlocked!
